Split Bill review

Damien McFerran

We review Split bill, an application for the Apple iPhone that allows you to work out how much friends owe after a meal

Published on Sep 4, 2009

Dining out with friends is one of life’s little pleasures; nothing stimulates decent conversation better than a delicious meal served along with refreshing beverages.

However, it’s equally true that nothing ruins a perfectly enjoyable evening more than arguing over who pays what when the bill arrives at the conclusion of the meal; when you’ve got a belly full of fine food the last thing you want to do is indulge in advanced mathematics while you attempt to split the amount six ways.

If you’ve ever encountered such a sour end to an otherwise agreeable night then the concept behind iPhone application Split Bill is one to which you’ll warm to instantly. You simply insert the total cost of the night’s revelry and then specify the number of people in attendance and voila – you have your individual total for each person.

Because the number of people is inserted via a scrolling dial, you can actually adjust the total too, which is handy if your party is being uncharacteristically generous and has unexpectedly agreed to pay for one of the people present (if it’s someone’s birthday, for example).

The interface is slick and simple, with a keypad taking up around 50% of the screen. The rest of the display is dominated by the aforementioned scroll dial, and the total cost of the meal - as well as the all-important cost of the individual spilt – is present at the very top.

However, very much like a stingy dinner guest, Split Bill withholds any other interesting features. There’s not even a help screen to talk you through the process, which would have been welcome, regardless of how easy the app is to actually use.

It would have also been useful to have some kind of history function, especially if you and your friends regularly dine at the same establishment and often order the same meals.

Given this disappointing lack of content, it’s perfectly acceptable to argue that Split Bill doesn’t offer astoundingly good value for money, especially when compared to other apps in the same price range. In fact, with only a tiny bit more effort you could easily gain the same results from the iPhone’s default calculator.

While Split Bill is unquestionably a streamlined way to find out who pays what on those expensive nights out, it’s so light on options that it’s surprising that the developer has the temerity to charge anything for it at all. There are better apps for this kind of thing available so we’d recommend you look elsewhere.